Changing of the Guard
by Velvetblight Belial
Summary: I wrote this pre-emptive Pachinko Castlevania fanfic while listening to nothing but the soundtracks to OutRun 2019 and Golden Axe III for 48 hours. I think it turned out pretty well considering the only thing I had to go on was a character design and random flashes from the 30 second trailer.


" _Jesse Cardiff, pool shark, the best on Randolph Street, who will soon learn that trying to be the best at anything carries its own special risks. In or out of the Twilight Zone."_

\- Rod Serling, The Twilight Zone

" _That's no way to get ahead in life."_

\- Natsuki Kasuga, Ga-Rei Zero

* * *

The castle armory was an unwelcoming place to all but the bravest crusaders. The only things illuminating the chamber were sparse torches that mysteriously never burnt out. The abandoned suits of armor left on display were too old and dust-worn to reflect the torchlight. The stone floor was decrepit and full of hazards. The stench of death wafted through the air from the dungeons directly below.

Victoria made her way through the armory with her elegant longsword in both hands. Goosebumps formed across her collarbone, stomach, and shoulder blades where the chilly air grazed her uncovered skin. She was here for the sword of Dullahan, a legendary weapon said to imbue special powers on whoever was worthy enough to wield it. She had to master the weapon's arcane power if Richter was ever going to stand a chance against Dracula.

Victoria cautiously came to a halt. The sword was sticking out of the ground just a few paces ahead of her. Before she continued forward, she felt her attention mysteriously being drawn toward the ceiling. Her throat tightened when she looked up.

Along the upper walls of the armory were rows of human bodies tied upside-down to inverted crosses. They were all in various stages of decomposition. Some were simply skeletal remains in rusted armor. Others looked they had been strung up later with bits of putrid flesh still clinging to their bones. The timeless nature of the castle itself made it difficult to say how long they had been here. They were men and women from every part of the world, all with different physiques and combat attire, some stretching back to eras Victoria couldn't even recognize. Together, they had only one thing in common: Their heads were missing.

The thick reddish-black stains on the walls told Victoria everything. These were previous adventurers who had lost to the horseman and were left to dry on the wall. Their blood had flowed downward from their severed necks, draining into a single massive reservoir that spanned underneath the floor. The castle absorbed their blood to fortify its demonic powers, while Dullahan kept their husks as proof of his victories.

Up on one of the walls was a vacant cross. It seemed like the right size for a nimble female sword dancer, one who might come wearing a revealing battle dress sewn from red and white fabric and embroidered with gold. She could picture herself tied upside-down by her wrists and ankles with her head missing and her skirt hanging past her buttoned shorts. She would take her place beside the rest of the grotesqueries, and the living castle would gorge on the blood dripping from her open neck. Her athletic and brightly-dressed corpse would make for one of the more colorful pieces in the collection.

Pushing her worst fears to the back of her mind, Victoria reminded herself why she was here and how far she had already come. Walking slowly toward Dullahan's sword, she accepted the gruesome risk she was about to partake. She was either going to defeat the hell-spawned guardian of the armory and use his weapon to cut a clear path toward Dracula, or she was going to end up mounted on the wall, a trophy for a twisted hunter who decorated his quarters with the bodies of his game rather than their heads.

She never thought there would be a third possibility.

She grasped the magic sword by its hilt with two steady hands. It began emitting an ominous violet light, and just as Victoria tried pulling it out of the floor, she felt electricity shoot through her fingers and force her to back away. Glancing up, she began to see the outline of a headless knight wearing a dreary and battle-worn suit of armor standing on the opposite side of the sword. Dullahan materialized in his corporeal form in a matter of seconds.

His height up to his shoulders towered over Victoria by a good two feet, and he outweighed her by at least thrice as much with his larger frame and heavier equipment. His bloated, purple, decaying head rested in the crook of his left arm. He easily pulled his broadsword from the ground with his one free arm and raised it for battle. His head levitated toward the ceiling and emitted a deep, reverberating laugh.

Dullahan lunged forward first, causing Victoria to quickly spring backward on her toes. She had the advantage of mobility and speed while he was pure demonic strength. She sprinted past Dullahan, jumped through the air, rebounded horizontally off one of the room's walls, and dived with her sword pointed at the horseman's spine. He spun in place and deflected her blade with his.

The two exchanged sword strikes for several minutes. If Victoria came close to scoring a major blow, Dullahan's circling head would interrupt her by launching green fireballs from his mouth and forcing her to move away. The relentless coordinated attacks soon got the better of her.

Victoria wound up leaning with her back against a wall, trapped under Dullahan's immense headless shadow. He loomed closer and pushed his sword downward. She held her blade sideways to shield herself, but her arms couldn't hold up all of the weight and his strength was steadily outmatching hers. The glowing blade crept closer and closer toward the open curtains on the front of her dress, until it was so close that it almost touched her skin and her slender abdominal muscles were forced to retreat inward. If the end of the sword advanced even a centimeter more, it would slip straight through her tender, defenseless flesh and make mincemeat out of her intestines.

At the least second, Victoria drove her leather knee into Dullahan's metal waist. The desperation move pushed Dullahan back far enough so Victoria was no longer sandwiched between him and the wall.

In an evil rage, Dullahan's head set all of its attention on eliminating Victoria. It unleashed its demonic energy and shot down toward her like a like an angry green meteor. With her quick reflexes, Victoria stepped slightly to the left, raised her sword, and slashed at the descending projectile.

Dullahan's head was instantly cut in two and exploded in a flash of darkness. Dullahan's body wanted to scream in agony, but only a sickening gurgling sound left the void of his throat. His sword swings became wild and unpredictable, forcing Victoria to take the defensive.

She was breathing hard from exertion. A slight mist of sweat started to form on her forehead. Her heart was racing, pumping additional fresh blood to her arms, her head, and her legs. She carefully watched Dullahan's erratic sword swings before countering with her weapon. A feeling of confidence grew inside of her as the duel continued. She had the advantage now. All she had to do was finish the horseman off.

The two swords clashed together, separated, and clashed again. Victoria swung toward a weakened joint in Dullahan's shoulder armor before he blocked her. Dullahan slashed at Victoria's ankles, but she quickly stepped out of the way and again crossed her sword with his. Victoria swung lower. Dullahan swung higher. Victoria's sword missed a vulnerable spot on Dullahan's torso by half an inch. The edge of Dullahan's sword met the delicate silk choker around Victoria's throat.

It was a liberating experience for her in the most unfortunate sense. The blade glided cleanly through her neck as if she were nothing more than a ripe grain of wheat waiting to be harvested. Her shoulder length red hair fluttered gently in the sudden deadly breeze. The threads of her choker split in half and slipped away from her dress. The vicious force of Dullahan's strike mingled with the graceful energy in her own movements to send her head flying forward and upward into the air. She became like a beautiful and morbid angel fountain as a crimson arch sprung out from the newly-formed stump of her neck, her rushing blood abruptly set loose from the narrow pressurized confines of her arteries. Her sword clattered to her feet while her arms flopped limply to her sides. Her head skipped across the ground, rolled several meters, and came to a stop. The rest of her body spasmed in the gruesome approximation of a riposte before crumpling to the floor. Her legs twitched violently inside their thigh length leather boots for a few more seconds before they became entirely motionless. One of the greatest drawbacks of being a mortal girl was her body couldn't survive once it had been cut free from her pretty little head.

Dullahan lowered his pulsating and blood-soaked sword. He had to hurry, less the Count's armory would be left without a watchman. He was dying, only not in the same quick and painless way as Victoria.

Victoria's perfect, pristine head was resting only a few feet away under a blanket of soft red hair. If this hadn't been a pyrrhic victory, Dullahan would have crushed it under his heavy armored foot or used it for target practice with his javelins after his finished mounting her body to the wall. Even if he had lost the battle and the foe had taken his sword like she planned, his undead body would have regenerated its strength over the next few decades so he could fend off future trespassers, just as long as his head remained intact.

But his head was gone. The feisty swordswoman had managed to destroy the source of his eternal life in an instant. Now there was only one thing Dullahan could do.

He approached one of the walls of the armory and scraped his sword across the old layered stones, drawing the shape of a doorframe. He slammed his sword into the center of the etching, sending dark waves of unholy magic through the wall so the scratched lines began to glow. The wall shifted, and in a cloud of ancient dust it opened to reveal a passageway into the unknown.

He slung Victoria's warm, almost weightless carcass over his shoulder and pulled her severed head up by the hair. The red bulb swayed listlessly at his side as he walked through the secret portal.

On the other end of the corridor was a hidden room that belonged to the castle crypt. In the heart of the room, surrounded by dozens of burning candles, was a wooden altar adorned with carvings of feudal knights. Dullahan placed his adversary's fallen body flat on the surface of the table, positioning her lifeless hands so her palms faced upward and formed a bowl over the lowest part of her waist. He lowered the back of her head into her palms so it would rest facing upward. Her eyes were still wide open with the same look of zeal and determination she had in the moment of her demise, and Dullahan carefully brushed his armor-clad fingers over her face to guide her eyelids shut. The small change made her look much more peaceful.

The headless knight retrieved a large flask of oil from a dust-covered cabinet. He emptied the flask in a circle around the altar, and then traced the remaining droplets across Victoria's forehead in the shape of a modified pentagram. He lifted one of the countless candelabras in the room and tossed it into the oil ring, instantly turning the altar into a funeral pyre. The flames rapidly spread across the floor, up the sides of altar, and finally over Victoria's complete but truncated remains.

The old Dullahan's work was done. Now there would be a new immortal sentry to take his place, just as he had drafted into service by the previous Dullahan centuries ago. His body knelt to one knee in front the burning pyre, slumped forward, and shattered into empty pieces of armor when it hit the ground. The fragments disappeared one by one.

* * *

Richter and Maria arrived at the armory together. They were relieved to find Victoria waiting for them and looking no worse for wear. It didn't occur to them how silently she was standing or how she only greeted them with a stoic nod.

"Did you get the sword, Victoria?" Richter asked.

Victoria reached to the side of her parted skirt and pulled the magic blade from its sheath. It was light and elegant, matching the style of her own weapons, and it glowed with a violet aura that the Dark Lord himself would fear. She glanced at the weapon curiously, then shifted her eyes toward Richter.

A white kitten climbed up on Maria's shoulder and growled.

"What's gotten into Byakko?" Richter asked.

"I'm not sure," Maria said with a quizzical look. "I think he smells something funny…"

They both glanced toward Victoria.

"I'm tired of going after Dracula like this, Richter," the sword dancer said in an ambiguous tone. "I think I need to… lighten up."

Her empty hand slowly reached up from her side as if it were searching for something. It moved away from her skirt and her visible midriff. It traveled up her red and white dress and toward her chest, hovering over the fine gold embroidery that decorated her blouse and the soft white frills that framed her cleavage. Finally, after much anticipation, her fingertips stopped at her neck and pulled away the small red ribbon that held her choker in place.

Richter and Maria gasped horror when they saw there was nothing attaching Victoria's head to her bare neck. Her head levitated upward as she let out a quiet, wicked chuckle through her smiling lips.

Maria summoned her animal familiars while Richter reached for his Combat Cross. The evil creature that had been reanimated in Victoria's alluring shape raised her sword. Her body dashed toward Richter, leaving a long trail of flames behind her feet. Her hair glowed orange and her eyes lit up like small infernos as her head breathed fire toward Maria. Richter barely dodged out of the way with a backflip, while Maria shielded herself from an incinerating demise under Genbu's enormous shell.

Richter and Maria regrouped and prepared to attack Victoria head-on. Victoria's headless body cartwheeled away, leapt two stories upward, and landed gracefully on a ledge near the armory's vaulted ceiling. Her head came to a rest on the clipped stalk of her neck and transferred more of its fiery powers into her body, before floating away again. She came raining back down with her sword raised over her vacant shoulders and a dense aura of flames surrounding her body. At the same time, Richter and Maria concentrated their strongest magic attacks upward. The room was consumed in a blinding flash of light as the two forces met.

GAME OVER


End file.
